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A Legal Quagmire

I was shocked to see your article, “A Stand For Religious Rights” (Princetonians, June 3) — shocked to see such cases equated with religious rights.

The Hobby Lobby case is a quagmire that equates corporations with people and allows bosses to impose their religious beliefs on their employees. It also is based on the false premise that some forms of contraception (morning-after pills and IUDs) cause abortions. They do not. More frustrating than the Hobby Lobby case was the inclusion of Mark Rienzi ’97’s work arguing for the religious “right” of pharmacists to not do their job and be allowed to deny emergency contraception to women. This is not a fight for religious freedom; this is imposing your religion on other people, regardless of their circumstances, beliefs, or needs.

Moreover, all of these “religious freedom” cases basically say that family planning and contraception are not basic health care. They are, for both women and men. Being able to plan pregnancies and, yes, use emergency contraception when necessary is critical for the lives of millions of women — and men — across this country. It is high time we recognized it as such, and not as a battleground for “religious freedom.” Would you have companies or business owners deny services to gay couples or people of different races or religion?

While certainly we can acknowledge the ability of Princetonians to argue and win difficult legal cases, glorifying those cases under the guise of “a stand for religious rights” ignores the greater and more important context. These cases were not about religious freedom being “alive and well” at all.

Emily S. Klein

Postdoctoral research associate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Princeton University